the cold, she watches the rising sun stain the horizon red and pour its soft light over the river, the banks and the distant bridge. Once more, she feels an urge to tell Kongzi that she’s pregnant, just to see the look of joy on his face. Then she considers keeping quiet about it, and getting rid of the fetus on the sly by swallowing some castor oil. No – I will have this baby, she says to herself, digging her toes into the sand. Once it’s born, Kongzi will leave me alone, and I’ll never have to get pregnant again. Suddenly she sees a vision of herself as a girl, leaning over an enamel basin and splashing icy water onto her face before setting off for school. She remembers the coldness of the water seeping through to her cheekbones.
Smells of fish and duck shit begin to rise from the ground. The ducks in the pen preen their feathers and ruffle their wings. Meili sniffs the stale sweat on her skin and longs for a shower or a bath. She knows that although the town’s public bathhouse doubles as a brothel, it has warm pools in which visitors can bathe for just six yuan if they bring their own soap and towel. She hasn’t dared go there yet, as she hates the thought of having to undress in front of strangers. The river has been too cold for bathing. But winter is over now. She grits her teeth and steps in up to her ankles. The cold refreshes and invigorates her; her feet transmit forgotten memories to her brain. She feels fully awake, conscious of the beating of her heart and the ticking of each passing second. She wades deeper into the river and feels the coldness dragging her further into her past. She is aware of being, at the same time, both a woman and child: her daughter’s mother and her mother’s daughter. She remembers the day twenty years ago, during the osmanthus-blossom season, when she accompanied her mother to the dentist to have her molar capped, and realises that she is now as old as her mother was then, and that in another twenty years she’ll be as old as her mother is now, and that all that will await her after that will be old age and decrepitude . . . As her thoughts begin to freeze, she glances over her shoulder and sees the ducks force their way out of the pen and wade into the shallow water.
Kongzi rolls out of the shelter and rinses his mouth. Meili walks up to the stove, opens a bag of slops she bought from a restaurant yesterday and ladles some into the bucket of duck feed. A large container ship shrouded in diesel smoke chugs past, blasting its horn. The huge wake it leaves behind surges onto the beach, floods the shelter then recedes, taking Meili’s flip-flops with it. Meili goes into the shelter to brush her teeth, but discovers that her toothbrush has been washed away as well.
As usual, during the few minutes before dusk, the wind drops and the river becomes calm. Kongzi is sitting at the bow of their boat, gazing at the ducks and the back of Meili’s neck as she stands knee-deep in the river, her skirt hitched up to her waist. In her rippling reflection, her skin is the same colour but her white skirt is slightly darker. Nannan lies in the cabin, gazing at her plastic doll in the red dress and singing a nonsense song she’s made up: ‘A-da-li-ya, wah wah! . . .’ A golden, late-spring haze spreads over the river, making the watery landscape resemble a blurred and muted colour photograph.
By the time Kongzi walks down the beach with the bucket of shredded cabbage for the ducks’ last feed, the evening sun is so low in the sky that his silhouette is dragged halfway across the river. With sudden alarm he notices six or seven ducks being swept downstream. He wades into the river, scrambles onto the boat, and tries to shoo them back towards the beach with the long bamboo pole. In the commotion, the boat becomes untethered and it too starts to drift downstream. Kongzi turns on the engine and drives it back to its mooring, while Meili chases after the errant ducks and tosses pebbles at their heads to encourage them to swim back. The ducks shake their wings in a fluster, splashing water into the